💳 Fintechs

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The Fintech Boom 💰

If there’s one thing we love here at Latinometrics (besides our premium subscribers), it’s market disruption.

Like when Uber began disrupting the traditional taxi model, or when Airbnb began giving hotels a run for their money. Or, to use a Latin American context, when people started banking and paying their bills and saving all from their homes, without needing to jump through a dozen hoops—all thanks to fintechs.

Fintech is short for financial technology. The term refers to firms which use technology to facilitate and modernize personal finance (and beyond).

These sorts of firms have grown in popularity over the last decade, to the extent that last year, per a new report from the Inter-American Development Bank and Finnovista, there were roughly 3K fintech companies operating across Latin America, representing a 340% growth over 2017 figures. And good news: we actually cover many of these fintechs weekly in our premium-exclusive Domingo Brief.

Naturally, over three-quarters of these fintechs can be found in the region’s five biggest economies: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile. In addition to the aforementioned Nu, major players like Addi and Bitso have reshaped national markets by driving innovation across a number of banking services.

What sort of services, you may ask? And should you even trust these newer tech firms, given your family has been banking with BBVA since before the Cold War?

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